Vega, Suzanne Nadine

1970 - Her parents often sang folk songs around the house, and when she began playing the guitar at age 11, she found herself attracted to the poetry of singer/songwriter music (Dylan, Cohen), and found a refuge from New York's chaos in traditional folk (Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Joan Baez).

1973 - At age 14, she made her first attempts at writing songs; however, when she attended the High School for the Performing Arts as a teenager, it was to study dance, not music.

1979 - Vega attended a Lou Reed concert, and the effect was a revelation: here was an artist chronicling the harsh urban world Vega knew, with the detail and literacy of a folk artist. Vega discovered a new voice and sense of possibility for her original material, and her writing grew rapidly.

1982 - Vega graduated from college and held down several low-level day jobs while quickly becoming the Greenwich Village folk scene's brightest hope.

1983 - After three years of rejections, Vega and her managers Ron Fierstein and Steve Addabbo finally convinced A&M (which had turned her down twice) to give her a shot, and she signed a contract.

1995 - Married to Mitchell Froom on March 17th.

1999 - Vega released the best-of retrospective Tried and True, taking stock of her past career (she had also split with longtime manager Ron Fierstein); she also published her first book, The Passionate Eye, a collection of poems, lyrics, essays, journalistic pieces, and the like.

2001 - Vega returned with her first album in five years, Songs in Red and Gray, which was greeted with her strongest reviews in a decade.